But it was after supper that, very much against his determinations, Caleb found himself asking Diana to dance. He has never known how it happened, unless it was the compelling power of her beauty in the corner of the ballroom when the music began again. “May I have the honor?” he asked. Diana hesitated the twentieth part of a second; it was almost imperceptible, but it sent the blood to the young man’s forehead. Then she smiled graciously. “With pleasure,” she said in a clear voice. It happened that they swept past Eaton, her skirt brushing against him, and in another moment they were going down the old ballroom together. All eyes followed them and returned to Jacob Eaton, who was standing discomfited for an instant. It was only one instant; the next Jacob was more suave and smiling than ever, and an heiress from Lexington danced with him. However, in that one instant, his face had startled the groups nearest him. People suddenly remembered that it was said that Eaton carried firearms at all times, and was one of the straightest shots that side of the Mississippi. Later, when Diana was driving home with her father, she spoke her mind. “I wish you’d make Jacob Eaton behave himself, pa,” she said; “he acts as if I belonged to him and he could choose my--my friends! I don’t like his manners up at Broad Acres, either; he said the other day that the cold grapery should be pulled down, and that he didn’t believe in owning a race-horse.” Colonel Royall rubbed the back of his head thoughtfully; his eyes were troubled. “His manners are becoming insufferable,” Diana went on, without heeding the silence. “If he’s rude to you, Diana,” the colonel said quietly, “just say so and I’ll thrash him.” “I sometimes wish you would!” she retorted wrathfully, and then, reaching up in the dim carriage, she patted the colonel’s cheek. “You’re an old dear,” she said fondly, “but you do get imposed on, and Jacob never does!” IX DR. CHEYNEY’S old gig traveled up the hill just behind Mrs. Eaton’s carriage, and both turned into the gateway of Broad Acres. That was the morning after Kitty Broughton’s ball. The doctor had not been there, having had a bad case on his hands in Eshcol, and he was full of excitement over a new review of the Cresset speech published in New York, in a great metropolitan daily. It seemed that Caleb Trench was going to be celebrated and old William Cheyney had championed him. He had the paper in his pocket and wanted to show it to Colonel Royall, but there was Mrs. Eaton, and when the doctor climbed down from his high seat she was already delivering her opinion to Diana and her father, and she did not suppress it on account of Dr. Cheyney. “I can’t imagine what has come over you, Colonel Royall!” that lady was saying with great indignation; “you must be out of your senses to allow Diana to dance in public with a common shopkeeper, a--a kind of hoodlum, too!”